Note: I forgot to say in the last recap that Anarky killed Thea’s boyfriend Alex. Clearly I didn’t even remember the guy existed, unfortunately. But yeah. He’s dead. RIP. Thea can’t cut a break. None of them can cut a break when it comes to romances. This ep was pretty solid. It wasn’t just gearing up for the finale, it was a good and action-packed episode all on its own. Previously on Arrow, Thea’s been stuck down in Pleasantville, where Darhk is stashing people he wants to survive the nuclear apocalypse. Apparently some of them take brainwashing drugs. Felicity and her father was attempting to get command back over the nukes, but she was forced to let one kill thousands of people instead of millions. Ouch. Oliver’s been having a crisis of faith for awhile now, and while he wants to push the light in him, he knows there’s a lot of dark and he doesn’t know how to mesh the two.

Felicity’s parents are bickering and now Curtis is involved. Felicity finally tells her mother the truth about everything going on. Donna tells Noah to leave once they save the day. It’s revealed it was her who took Felicity and left, rather than her father abandoning them, because she knew it was what was best. He’s not a good guy, you know? I’m still not sure that was a great decision, but Felicity seems to be okay with it. Felicity and Noah go full on hacker war this episode, and they’re up against Felicity’s ex Connor from college. They both want to get the Rubicon codes. At first it looks like he’s going to win, probably because he had one up on them to start with, but their combined powers of awesome defeat him. Now they have control over it and the city is safe … for now. From the bombs at least. Since the episode ends with Darhk showing up ready to kill Felicity though, that’s going to go in an interesting direction. He probably should’ve done that in the first place, to be honest. Then she wouldn’t have had a chance to foil his plans. He also just lets Diggle and Oliver go a lot. I know it’s for the sake of the show, but it seems really stupid and plot-driven. No I want you to be alive while I burn everything. Okay, but that never works out for you villains, does it?

Anyyyyway. Oliver and Diggle get down to Pleasantville thanks to Felicity sleuthing, and they go after Thea. Unfortunately she’s been brainwashed by her pleasant as always father Malcolm. She fights with Ollie for a bit but then he brings her back to himself. I’m not sure why they needed to have her fight him at all if it was going to be that easy to cure her, but I’m guessing to fill more time/space. FILLER. Anarky is holding Ruve Darhk hostage and their kid and he wants to blow everything up still. Oliver convinces Malcolm to get people out of the city because it’s going to blow. He does find out that some of the people are there by choice (DUH) and that Darhk has given them hope to survive the worst. It makes him ponder whether he’s capable of giving his own people hope, when it seems like Star City is constantly being beaten down. I know exactly where this storyline is headed. They go after Anarky but he does manage to get Ruve killed. Oliver promises to protect her daughter before she dies.

So Darhk’s plan is destroyed. His little oasis is destroyed. His wife is dead. He actually doesn’t know what happened to his daughter. He’s out for blood, and he goes straight for Felicity. But he also seems like a guy who doesn’t care at all at this point. And that can only mean legit trouble, since he was already a maniacal psychopath before this. Now he’s like let’s destroy everything with me in it. Yikes. I’m ready for this season to come to an end. I liked this episode though, it had good action pieces. I like the CONCEPT of Oliver struggling with being a hero or an antihero. It’s just that we’ve seen this for every season and I wish I could just be like compromise babe. Be somewhere in between. Also I haven’t talked about the flashbacks because I think they’re all ridiculous and I have no interest in watching them let alone writing about them. Nope.